Doreen Bast eyed her for a moment and Eden had to fight not to squirm under the look. “I’m doing well,
now.”
She shot Kennedy a look. “Not a scratch on me.”
Her coat, however, was another story.
“
But
I was just saying there might have been something ‘magical’ about that wolf Eden saw. Here, look.” She wiggled her eyebrows as she snatched her camera out of Eden’s hands and passed it over to Rowan.
It only took Rowan a quick glance and she let out a small gasp, leaning closer. “Damn, that’s one big wolf.”
“And there were no tracks.” Kennedy leaned back in the booth, arms crossed over her chest, and mock-glared at Eden.
“I’m not saying it wasn’t real. Hello, I saw it to. I’m just saying that I’d buy light on its feet before I’d buy magic.
Wooo.”
She made a sound like a ghost, wiggling her fingers while she did it, and they all laughed. Still, relief nudged at her heart. She wasn’t crazy after all, they had proof. That was all that mattered at the moment.
“May I?” Dorie asked and Rowan showed the camera to her grandmother. She pointed at the corner of the screen. “See it?”
Dorie went white and she swayed slightly. One hand shot out and slapped the table for balance. In a moment both Ro and Eden were standing beside her, Dee’s camera sitting on the table. Rowan gave her grandmother a worried look, her eyes wide. “You okay, Nana?”
Eden could feel the old woman trembling and for the first time in as long as she’d known Dorie, Rowan’s grandmother felt frail. Old. It tore at her heart. Dorie was the kind of woman who had always seemed younger than them. Unstoppable.
“I, yes.” She gave a shaky nod. “Just feeling my age.” She laid a hand over Eden’s, then kissed Rowan on the cheek. “You ladies enjoy your breakfast, I’m going to see if Quinn can drive me home. It’s on his way back to the office and I see him leaving now.”
“You sure you don’t want me to go with you?” Rowan looked every bit as shaky as her grandmother.
Doreen shook her head. “I’m fine. Enjoy yourselves. I just need a bit of a nap.”
Her gaze slid to the camera and then she turned and headed across the diner, stopping before a tall, lean man in a green ranger’s jacket on his way out. Quinn Dawson smiled at her and offered her his arm, obviously willing to drive her home. Eden felt the last of the tension drain from her shoulders. Quinn was one of the few single men left in town, but Kennedy had had a crush on him since high school, and one she wasn’t willing to give up. Nor was she brave enough to ask him out.
Still, if Quinn got claimed by a woman, it wouldn’t be by her or Rowan. Best friends didn’t poach, and they wouldn’t be the ones to break Kennedy’s heart.
“I hope she’s okay,” Eden said, watching as Dorie and Quinn disappeared out the front door.
“Me too. I’ve never seen her go that pale.” Rowan leaned back against the booth, not looking so healthy herself. She pressed a hand to her stomach. “For a second I thought she was going down.”
Eden reached out and laid a hand on her friend’s arm. “She’s in good hands now.”
“You know Quinn will see her safely inside.” Dee leaned across the table, head tilted up to look at her friend. “He won’t leave her until she’s comfortable. Especially with as shaky as she seems. Everyone loves your grandma.”
“I know. I still feel like I should go with her, but she hates being babied.” Rowan ran a hand through her hair, her nerves palpable, but Eden could see her trying to mask her emotions. No doubt trying to act like everything was okay. If that was what Ro wanted, they’d be more than happy to help her there. Rowan blew out a steadying breath. “What do you all want to eat? I got a new cook working the kitchen today, but if you’re looking for food from the master, I just made a fresh batch of homemade doughnuts.”
She gave them a forced smile.
“Peanut Butter Lovers?” Eden asked, her stomach rumbling. Rowan nodded, and her grin turned real.
“You bet your ass.” She glanced to Kennedy. “And you?”
“Same. You’re my hero.”
With a laugh, Rowan flagged down one of the waitresses. “Wanna bring us a large order of the PBLs I just made? And chocolate milk all around.”
After all, Eden thought with a wry grin, they couldn’t have peanut butter doughnuts without chocolate milk. It was like a Reese’s mouthgasm.
“You got it, boss.” The waitress hurried off for the kitchen.
A few minutes later, she returned carrying a large tray with three huge glasses of chocolate milk, and a stack of doughnuts still warm enough that the peanut butter frosting dripped down over the edge of each doughnut.
“I’ve died and gone to heaven,” Eden said and snagged one off the plate, grabbing her chocolate milk with her free hand. She stared at the circle of gooey greatness. “My life is now complete.”
Both Rowan and Kennedy dove in as well, and for a few minutes, there was nothing but the sound of them quietly chewing, followed by the occasional slurp of chocolate milk. Then Rowan leaned back against the booth, plucking at her second doughnut. “Plans for today, ladies?”
“Getting my sled fixed.”
“Thought you were doing that yesterday?” Ro frowned at her, but Eden just lifted one shoulder in a shrug.
“The guy was sick and Luke’s still out of town, so I have to use this guy if I want to get back out to work any time soon. Hopefully whatever he ate this morning settles better with him. Oh! Smug was there too. So I’ll be picking him up today.”
Both friends grinned. “Thank God. I was beginning to worry the poor pup had gotten lost in the elements. Mother nature is a bitch.” Ro said, then shoved another bite-sized chunk of doughnut in her mouth.
Kennedy made a soft sound in her throat for agreement. They all knew what it was like to lose a pet to the wilderness up here. Rowan had lost a cat to a coyote last summer, Kennedy her childhood dog to a black bear that had decided to go scavenging in her back yard. The fact that Smuggler had made it and wound up safely in someone’s house was damn near a miracle.
“So who’s the new guy? I knew Luke had someone working for him, but I’ve yet to see him.” A sly smile edged along Kennedy’s lips as she looked up at Eden over her glass. “Old, married, cute? You know you gotta spill the details.”
Three single woman in a small town in the middle of nowhere. There weren’t many people they didn’t know. Single guys were fewer and farther between.
“Bay Hollister?” Eden hadn’t heard of him before Luke had called her back to inform her he was on his way out of town, but that Bay could fix her sled easy. “Lives out on White Rabbit Road.”
“Never heard of him,” Ro said. Kennedy shook her head. They both pinned her ‘the look.’ The look that meant she was holding out.
Eden ducked her head slightly, white blonde hair falling over her face, and she squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. Kennedy slapped the table. “So he is cute.”
With a laugh, Eden jerked her head back up. “I didn’t say that.”
“Then spill it!”
And when Rowan poked her in the side to show her agreement with Kennedy, Eden couldn’t help but giggle. “Okay, okay. When he wasn’t puking—”
“Ick,” Kennedy said, but Eden waved her off.
“When he wasn’t puking, he was cute.”
Gorgeous, actually
. She squirmed a little in her seat, remembering the tall man that had met her out in the snow. His face had been all angles and he’d had indents on both sides of his nose, no doubt from where he wore glasses—either for reading, or in the shop, she wasn’t sure.
And he’d felt muscled under that coat. Surprising, considering he’d looked stick thin, even under the parka, and the dark circles under his eyes had her wondering just how much sleep he got. Or if he was routinely as sick as he’d been that morning. But the moment she’d slipped an arm around his waist to help him to the door, she’d felt the corded muscle. A man obviously familiar with working hard for a living.
One look at her friends, waiting for the rundown, and Eden couldn’t hold it back. She spilled the whole story. When she finished, she was stuffed to the gills from her second doughnut, had drained her glass of chocolate milk, and was slumped back in the booth.
“So I’m going back today. Hopefully he’s feeling better and can work on the sled.”
“He sounds lonely,” Kennedy said, and while Eden couldn’t help but agree with her, Dee automatically assumed any single man in Mercy Pass was lonely. After all, the single women in the town were just as scarce as the men.
“Every single man in this town is lonely or crazy according to you.”
“Hey. Don’t harp. Besides, I might need to order me some wood.” Kennedy winked.
“Hard
wood.”
“Oh my God, don’t,” Rowan said. “That was bad.”
“The pun was fully intended.”
Rowan snorted, having to talk over Eden’s sudden burst of laughter. “Honey, you couldn’t tell a joke if you tried. Not one off the cuff.”
“What I actually
meant,”
Kennedy said, butting back in, “by saying he sounded lonely, was that he was sick and he had no one else other than Smug. That’s kind of sad. He probably doesn’t even know anyone else in town. When we get sick we can at least call each other.”
Eden smiled. Kennedy also had the biggest heart out of the three of them. “I’m not sure guys do the whole sick, pity fest thing.”
“Yeah, but maybe he should think of getting himself a dog. I’d go nuts living way out there with no one around.”
Rowan laughed. “That’s you, honey. Maybe he likes the quiet. Besides, no offense to Eden, but dogs bark. Holy shit, I couldn’t imagine living with one, let alone a whole gang.”
Eden listened as her friends bickered, enjoying the friendly solace for a few more minutes. She couldn’t dawdle all day. She had every intention of getting her sled fixed and getting some work done. Besides, when Bay Hollister wasn’t bowing in front of the porcelain throne, he was gorgeous.
She bit her lip and glanced at the clock. “Time for me to go, ladies.”
“Uh-huh,” Kennedy said, her eyes narrowed on Eden. “You’re off to see him, aren’t you?”
“Yep. And it’s for business.”
Kind of.
Her friend didn’t buy it for a second. Dee arched an eyebrow, taunting. “Then take me with you.”
“No. Not a chance. He might be contagious.”
“I don’t care!”
Eden grinned and slid out of the booth, shaking her head. Business or not, she’d be seeing Bay Hollister solo.
Waving to her friends, Eden headed out of the Fairy Cat Café and strode across the snow-covered lot. One look at the sled still sitting in the back of her truck and the morning teasing drifted away. Her gaze lingered over the busted drive bow, the wood splintered at the edges. An image of the white wolf flashed through her mind, the hard impact of the snow as she’d hit the ground. She had a bruise on her side from the force of that animal’s blow.
Looking at the proof of the other day, and it felt real again to her. Like she wasn’t crazy. But the moment she thought of Kennedy’s picture, of the missing tracks in both circumstances, and her world started to tilt off kilter. Animals, real live animals, left paw prints behind. A wolf the size of a bear would have left a mark in the snow.
“Oh, hell, you are not doing this to yourself now,” she muttered to herself, reaching out to grip the back of her pickup truck as she stared up at the sled.
Whether or not the wolf was real, Eden needed to get back to work. And that meant a fixed sled. Which meant her next stop was Bay Hollister’s. And if she were lucky, actually doing something productive might keep her mind on things she could control, and not on possibly imaginary wildlife.
Except figments of the imagination didn’t leave claw marks.
Zeke Crawford groaned, his fingers icy with the cold, and he blinked against the sharp pain throbbing in his head.
What the fuck had happened?
He started to move when something slammed him back into the snow, hard enough that it drove the breath straight out of his lungs. His face felt raw, frozen, which was a step up compared to the rest of his body.
He felt like he’d been steamrolled with a thousand-pound porcupine. Sharp needle-like tingles shot down his spine. He tried to move again, his hands pressing deeper into the snow to try and heft himself up, when a dark growl rumbled through the air around him. Followed by the rush of hot air against his cheek.
Fuck me
. Panic settled into his bones as his mind finally caught up to what was happening.
Bear
. So much for a leisurely walk around the yard. He must have gotten sideswiped by a goddamned bear.
Play dead, play dead, play dead
. The words were a mantra in his head, rapid fire, over and over again, and Zeke forced his body to go limp, reacting out of pure survival instinct. Surely if the animal thought he was dead it’d leave him alone. The bear gave a sharp snort from somewhere above him and the weight between his shoulders eased. Snow crunched nearby and Zeke nearly whimpered with relief. That had been too close. He waited, giving the animal time to move on before he’d dare try and stand again.
“Shhh,” a woman whispered and every nerve in his body suddenly went on alert. Zeke jerked slightly, his muscles tensing to move, when he heard the bear snarl beside him.